The ongoing battle between security experts and authors of malicious code has been raging for many a year, and despite doing a good job of reacting quickly to or staying ahead of new threats, it seems as though recent developments have encouraged some vendors to take a sideways look at the problem.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is an interesting alternative to more conventional security solutions in that it uses ‘collective intelligence' to provide protection rather than a typical series of updates. What this means is that Panda utilises a constantly updated, real-time database of signature files retrieved from community users in order to identify and ward off threats, with statistical data gauging file safety until a conclusion can be drawn as to a potential threat level. Benefits of this approach include reduced bandwidth consumption, up-to-date protection and a smaller footprint in terms of processing and memory resources.

Best of all, Panda Cloud is available as a free download, which while appreciated does only seem fair, considering how fundamental the consumer is to the performance of the software.

A 20MB download from the Panda Cloud website is all that's required to retrieve the software, and installation is quick and easy, taking around a minute. On completion you'll need to create a Panda Cloud Antivirus account in order to take advantage of the latest community updates, and while you can opt out of supplying Panda's databases with information from your computer, it's not advised if you want to get the most from the software.

With registration complete a simple interface offers security status at a glance and three tabs grant access to the rather limited array of features available elsewhere. The Settings menu allows you to opt out of the automatic virus management and stop sending virus information anonymously to the community, and a Report window shows all detected threats in a colour-coded, categorised list, along with the ability to view an events report of recent scans.

Additionally, a Scan menu offers a quick scan mode and the ability to target specific files or folders. A quick scan of our test system initially took about five minutes, though this time dropped during subsequent scans to less than a minute. This puts it up there with modern ‘rivals' such as Norton Internet Security and BitDefender, and although the nature of the software makes it more difficult to draw a direct comparison, it's an impressive time nonetheless.

Panda is light on resources and we noticed no system slowdown during scans. It detected all of the malicious files we were aware of on our test system, however it is worth mentioning that instead of removing these files, Cloud Antivirus simply places them in its version of ‘quarantine' - namely a dedicated recycle bin - and prevents them from being loaded. From here it's possible to allow access or remove the offending file depending on user knowledge of the issue and threat detection reports.

All in all we were impressed by Panda Cloud Antivirus, especially when you consider that it's free. This is a lightweight, straightforward yet capable alternative to more conventional security solutions, and particularly in the case of those looking to protect a notebook or two on a network, would offer peace of mind without the often unnecessary bulk of a more mainstream suite of tools.

Verdict
Panda Cloud Antivirus is an innovative, free way to protect yourself from malware and malicious intrusion online and its very nature offers benefits over more conventional solutions. While it may be a little lightweight for those requiring a higher level of security, we can certainly see its appeal in the right environment.

Company: Panda

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